[Reorganization of the provincial health system in the Democratic Republic of the Congo].

Introduction: In the framework of implementation of health system reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and in a context of decentralization dictated by the National Constitution, this study presents the process and results obtained in terms of the provincial level of health care organization in DRC.

Methods: A two-year multidisciplinary interventional research protocol was elaborated with two phases and 9 steps including organizational analysis, team building, and organizational learning. It resulted in transformational actions and improved knowledge, allowing the development of an innovative organizational model of the intermediate level of the health care system in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Overt and covert personality traits associated with coronary heart disease.

Some authors suggested the existence of contradictory traits in the personality pattern associated with coronary heart disease: while presenting overt, active, adult-like traits, coronary subjects would be, at a more covert or repressed level, characterized by passive and infantile tendencies. To test this hypothesis, coronary and control subjects were submitted to three types of personality questionnaire, each of them measuring the same four personality traits (seclusion, impulsiveness, dependence and passivity) which, in the adult individual, are considered by Murray's (1938) theory of personality as persisting from infancy. No difference appeared between the two groups on type 1 questionnaires, describing behavioural features of individuals outwardly displaying the four traits.

Goal-setting behaviour and coronary heart disease.

In order to test Dunbar's (1943) theory about goal-setting behaviour in cardiovascular subjects, measures of performance and goal levels were taken on 25 coronary subjects, 25 hypertensive subjects and a control group of 25 fracture subjects. Ths hypertensive pattern of goal-setting behaviour appeared not significantly discriminated from that of control subjects, although the data were in the direction predicted by Dunbar, hypertensive subjects being higher for success and for low goals. For coronary subjects, the results were in complete agreement with the tested theory, these subjects showing a significantly higher rate of high goals than control subjects, and recording a higher rate of failure.